


What Rough Beast

by ishafel



Series: The Winter Prince [7]
Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-25
Updated: 2010-01-25
Packaged: 2017-10-06 16:49:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/55796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishafel/pseuds/ishafel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Happy endings can be hard to come by.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Rough Beast

Where do you look for an Irishman in hiding in Ireland, but in a pub? Three years after the war ended Snape ran Seamus Finnegan to ground in the wrong part of Belfast. He'd promised himself this pleasure a long time ago, but he'd known the waiting would make it all the sweeter. Finnegan was the last of them: the last of Dumbledore's golden children: the only one who had been made to pay for Draco's agonies and the only one to survive the war.

Snape had seen them all dead-watched Potter choke on his own blood, Thomas torn to pieces by Death Eaters, had himself taken Finch-Fletchley along on a routine raid and shot him to death in an alley in East London. Only Finnegan was left, and Snape had known all along how to find him, though Finnegan had kept running. Looking at him now, the length of the bar between them, Snape remembered Draco's broken and badly set fingers, the cigarette burns on his nipples and the soft skin of his arm where the Mark had never been.

Azkaban had never broken Lucius Malfoy. Snape had. He had been following orders; he had done it for all the right reasons. But the House of Gryffindor had broken Draco for no reason at all. Snape had let victory take precedence over vengeance then, and he did not regret it now. He sat down at the table across from Finnegan, and threw back the hood of his invisibility cloak. Caught Finnegan's wrist as the man scrambled to rise, and squeezed until he fell back in his seat.

Draco didn't know where Snape was right now. Draco had left him a long time ago, though he had stayed longer than Snape expected, and he was kinder going than he might have been. There were some wounds that took years healing, if they healed at all, and Snape was still not sure if Draco's would. "Remember me?" he asked, and Finnegan nodded reluctantly. "Good," he said. "I'd hate to think you'd forgotten. Finnegan looked, and smelled, like a man who'd been living on the streets for three years-since Snape had had him named a war criminal. He was cadaver-thin, and his right eyelid twitched.

Snape mouthed, "Silencio," and broke Finnegan's ring finger. Finnegan writhed, mouth open and wet, eyes leaking tears. Snape didn't have to look under the table to tell he'd pissed himself. When he could see the man had regained control, he lifted the silencing charm.

"Kill me," Finnegan blurted. "Kill me, please, I'm begging you, I want you to kill me--."  
Snape wondered how often Draco still woke up screaming, dreaming that he was back in the cage with a wand at his throat and a cock tearing into him. "What fun would that be?" he asked sweetly, and gave Finnegan his best death's head grin, the one that most people found more loathsome than the mask.

"I don't-I didn't mean--." This time Snape used a spell to stick the man's tongue to the roof his mouth before he broke the middle finger.

"I was an active Death Eater for nine years," he said. "Almost a fifth of my life. I'm not sure you understand what that means. I never refused an order the Dark Lord gave me, Seamus, not once-did you know that? I've raped and tortured and killed. Done terrible things. But I never once did them for myself. Until now."

He set Finnegan free an instant before he reached across the table and kissed him, hard, the way he'd once kissed Draco. "I could make you hard," he whispered against the man's skin. "I could make you come in your pants where you sit, like the filthy, useless animal you are." He broke the index finger. This time Finnegan did scream, high and breathless and shrill. No one even looked over. It was that kind of place.

He felt a little sick. What he'd said to Finnegan was true. He had done terrible things, to prove himself and stay alive and prove himself again. He had not liked them then. He was not sure he liked them now. He could have brought Draco with him today, and he had not, even though this should, by rights, be Draco's kill. But petty as Draco could be, true cruelty was not in his nature. Draco would want Finnegan dead, but not at this price.

"Avada Kedavra," he said softly, and the pub filled with a soft green glow. Snape touched his Auror's ring to Finnegan's lips to certify the kill, and slipped the cloak back over his head and walked out. When he was well away from the streetlights, he Apparated back to England.

He was banging on Draco's door before he stopped to think about it. He could still taste Finnegan's death, and he was still half hard. Draco had the door open before he made up his mind to go. "Severus," he said coolly, like he was expecting Snape to come pounding on his door in the middle of the night. His fair hair was longer than he used to wear it, and in the torchlight he looked very like his father had. Snape was twenty years Draco's senior, and at times like this Draco could still make him feel impossibly young and gauche.

This was, after all, what it meant to be a Malfoy, born to privilege and pure blood. Draco stepped aside to let him in, and Snape deliberately crowded him, so that their shoulders touched. He could hear Draco's indrawn breath, but Draco's mind was impenetrable: he had no way of knowing what the other man was feeling: arousal, annoyance, fear. He followed him into the kitchen, and watched as Draco made coffee.

Draco's hands were absolutely steady when he poured. He had never really had a chance to prove himself as a spy, but Snape knew he would have been good. He had his father's natural flamboyance, but it was coupled with his mother's common sense. Unlike Lucius, he knew when to cut and run. "What have I done to rate a visit from the head of the Unspeakables, Severus?" he asked, as he set Snape's cup down in front of him. His voice was perfect, light, insolent: it would have driven Snape mad on any other night.

Tonight he killed a man in cold blood for Draco's sake. Tonight was different. He spread his hands flat against the tabletop. "I don't know," he said hoarsely. "Draco-."

"Hey," Draco said. "It's okay. You know that. I owe you my life. If you want to turn up in the middle of the night, full of cryptic utterances, feel free."

"I wasn't going to apologize," Snape said tiredly, and Draco grinned. And to Snape, of course, it was like having the sun come out because you'd asked it to. He loved Draco so much it was shameful, and his only consolation was that Draco was too blind, or too damaged, or simply too young to realize it.

"No," Draco said. "I don't expect you were. It's late. And I have to work in the morning. Why don't you sleep here?"  
Snape pushed back his chair and started to stand, and it was only then that he realized how tired he was. The Killing Curse took a tremendous amount of power-or very little, to end a man's life. The flat had a second bedroom, but Draco led him past it to the main one. They went to sleep on opposite sides of Draco's big bed, with a tremendous chaste space between them.

He woke to Draco's mouth on his cock, hot and wet and absolutely familiar. He held himself absolutely still, afraid to do more than clutch sheets and breathe. Whatever had motivated Draco, whether it was kindness or pity or lust, he could not bear for it to stop. Draco knew exactly what to do to drive him mad, lips and tongue and a finger slick with lube, but when Snape closed his eyes and came, it was Finnegan's slack gray face he saw.

Afterward he lay with his arm over his face, trying desperately to put his walls back up. Draco flopped down beside him and put his head on Snape's shoulder. He didn't often touch Snape voluntarily except when they were actually having sex-so Snape knew something was wrong. He stayed where he was, absolutely still, hoping that Draco would change his mind about saying whatever it was he was so clearly thinking. Draco had never really understood that there were things that shouldn't be said in bed.

Questions about why he'd joined the Death Eaters, anyway, since he wasn't a believer-fell into that category. "Now?" he asked. "You really want to talk about this now?"

He'd thought Draco might roll over and look him in the eyes, but Draco stayed where he was, body rigid with tension. The question was important, then, which made it dangerous. Draco had done this to him before-asked Snape terrible and personal questions and gotten upset when he answered them honestly.

"You won't understand," he said as a preface. "Let's have that established from the beginning. Looking back-I can't even understand what I was thinking. Voldemort had a gift for offering you what you wanted most, and making you forget why you should not take it. Knowledge or wealth, power or glory, or all four at once. I didn't believe in what he was doing, I believed in what he could do for me."

He could feel Draco, stiff against his shoulder. "My father believed. Didn't he?"

Snape knew the answer, and he wondered whether or not it was something Draco wanted to hear. He brushed Draco's mind lightly, but it was like skimming the sunlit surface of a river, deceptively placid on the surface and quick and changeable beneath it. Draco had learned the hard way to hide what he was thinking. "Yes," Snape said reluctantly. "Your father believed everything. But he never trusted Voldemort."

Either it wasn't what Draco was hoping to hear-or it was. He was out of bed before Snape could even sit up, and the bathroom door slammed behind him. When he heard the shower start, Snape got up and charmed himself more or less clean, and dressed again in yesterday's clothes. He was leaning against the counter, on his second cup of coffee and halfway through the Prophet, when Draco finally came out, now fully dressed.

"I'm sorry to be such a poor host," he said, the words cool, impersonal. Snape admired it as much as he hated it: half an hour ago that mouth had been around his cock, and if he hadn't been there he'd never have believed it.

"It doesn't matter," he said politely. "I remembered where you keep everything."

"Yes, I'm sure you did," Draco returned, equally politely. He brushed past Snape, reaching for a mug, and Snape caught his wrist and twisted it, hard.

Draco fought him hard for about ten seconds, but Snape had him, could easily have broken his arm had he wanted to, and Draco knew it. He was shaking so hard that Snape could feel it, hard enough to rattle the cup on the table. Snape knew what it was that bothered him and why, and didn't let himself think about it. He pushed Draco down into a chair and leaned over him, and ripped away the shields that protected Draco's mind.

Draco had been well and thoroughly taught, but he had no particular aptitude for Occlumency. And if there was one strength Snape had above all others, it was this. Deliberately, slowly, he slid beneath the surface. Draco on a concrete floor, body curled awkwardly to protect broken ribs. Snape knelt beside him, reaching out to touch his shoulder. "Hey," he said. "It's okay. This won't go on forever--."

Draco uncoiled, flattening Snape. His mind, formidable, powerful and disciplined, slammed shut around Snape's. It was an idiotic thing to have done, and unbelievably dangerous. If something went wrong, he risked his own sanity as well as Snape's. Snape lay under him, tense but quiet. Fighting would do no good now. This was a trap even Voldemort could not have escaped. Eventually he whispered, "Let me go."

Draco snorted, but he rolled away. Snape stood up, stiff despite the fact that he was not really in his body. "That wasn't what I meant," he said, "and you know it. This is idiotic, Draco. You're as likely to destroy yourself as you are me."

"I can live with that," Draco said. "Or not, as the case may be. Tell me what the fuck you're doing in my head."

"I wanted--." Snape broke off. There was no way to lie here, no distractions, nothing but he and Draco in an empty room with a concrete floor, closer than any two people were meant to be. "I wanted to know what you were thinking. I wanted to know why you asked me that. Draco--."

Draco said, "Maybe if I wanted you to know, Snape, I would have told you."

Snape turned away from him, because he knew that if Draco saw his face there would be no secrets at all between them. If he had been in his body, he would have punched the wall, hard enough to break his hand and clear his head. As it was, there was nothing he could do but breathe, and even that was a struggle. What he'd had with Draco, what he did have: it was an ugly,  
awkward thing, fragile: an old man's foolishness. He did not mean to burden Draco with it.

He was still trying to pull himself together when Draco started to talk again. He stayed where he was, frozen, waiting. "When I went down on you this morning, you were thinking of something else. Someone else. I'm not a virgin, Severus, and I'm not an idiot. You weren't thinking about a fuck, you were thinking about a kill. And I can't--that's not who I am. It's not who I want  
to be."

This time Snape did move to look at him. "Have I asked that of you?" he demanded. "Have I asked you to do anything of the kind?"

Draco looked back at him, gray eyes direct and steady. "You loved my father," he said quietly. "And you loved Tom Riddle. Whatever you're looking for, I'm not it. And I won't play games with you. You won't talk to me about anything important, fine. But don't expect anything from me. I'm done, Severus. I'm out."

The walls had all been blank; now there was a door. Draco was walking toward it.

"Wait," Snape said. His voice sounded like someone else's, far away and foreign. "Draco, please."

Draco stopped, but he didn't turn.

"Your father was my closest friend, as close to me as a brother." The words were someone else's, too, must have been, except that there was no one here but the two of them, no space for lies. "Riddle--Voldemort--what I felt for him was what a dog feels for its master. Not love. Blind loyalty. Dependence. You, I love. But I can't be someone I'm not, either."

"Keep talking," Draco said.

"I love you," Snape said. "Not despite who you are. Because of it. Because there's no Mark on your arm, because there's no blood on your hands, because you can look at yourself in the mirror without flinching. The things I've done--I knew what I was doing--I knew that we were wrong. I can live with it. But I won't blame you if you can't. If you want to walk away--." He was shaking, and he could not seem to stop.

Draco had turned to face him, after all. He stood with his arms crossed over his chest, stern and implacable as ever his father had been. Whatever hope Snape had been holding on to, he let go. Draco was not his to lose, and never would be. It hurt even more than he'd expected. And then Draco's face crumpled. "I'm sorry," he said, and he went through the door and closed it behind him.

Snape, suddenly alone and still not in his own head, slid down the wall until he was sitting down. He was still there, still trying to summon the strength to stand up and go on, when the door opened again. Draco's face was streaked with tears, but his chin was up. Snape knew that look; he'd seen it before on both Draco's face and Lucius's. It meant resolution, which was a rare thing indeed in a Malfoy.

Draco said, "Severus. I've changed my mind. I didn't mean it."

Snape looked up at him, waiting for it. Draco smiled at him, sweet and sincere and a little loopy, and put out his hand. Snape took it, and let Draco pull him to his feet. "Come on," Draco said to him. "Let's go home."


End file.
